Tarutaru Paladins

We

We fought beetles and bats in Garlaige Citadel.

couldn't level our subjobs today, so Neyla wanted to try his hands at building an experience points party for my Dragoon and his White Mage in Garliage Citadel. Janelly was seeking on Paladin, so we had the necessary core group. Neyla found a Dancer, Dark Knight and Beastmaster to round out the cast, and we hit the basement to start killing bats and beetles.

I was amused to be the only melee using /WAR. I can understand it for Dancer since it leads to faster TP gain, but a Dark Knight? Man, the point of being a damage dealer is to do damage. Leave the healing to the White Mage. I swear, everybody's afraid of taking a few hits these days.

The DRK eventually punked out and had to leave, so Neyla found a Red Mage to replace him. I'd been paying attention to MP levels to that point, since the Beastmaster was quick to pull when Neyla and Janelly probably could've used a few more seconds of rest, but I tuned it all out when the Red Mage arrived to Refresh them. Neyla didn't have that luxury, because the RDM was driving him crazy by sending /tells advising Neyla to buy an Astral Shield.

I had a lot of fun down there, although it didn't really last as long as I would've liked. My only real goal was to reach 50 so we could start questing our AF, and we managed that. Getting Super Jump and Double Attack made me a very happy taru. Popping off 400 damage on Double Thrust isn't so scary when you can leap into the air a few seconds and shed all your hate.

We decided to start on Neyla's WHM artifact armor. He already had the Yagudo Holy Water for his duckbills, and moccasins were available at the auction house in Jeuno. We then went to Xarcabard to fight Dark Spark.

One

Shmedly's tanking is very impressive.

of Neyla's friends, a tarutaru named Shmedly, agreed to come and tank the Altedour I Tavnazia fight. He has a second character, Glob, who's also at the WHM AF levels. My first thought upon hearing Shmedly would tank was "Yeah, but for how long?" because that shadow hits like a truck. The secret weapon, of course, was the PLD/NIN combination.

Holy hell, that's all I can say. I've never seen that fight go down with less damage taken in my entire gaming life. It's probably a good thing that Paladins don't have access to Provoke as a native job ability, because there'd be no stopping them at that point. I was on Beastmaster, making a Light skillchain with Neyla's Red Mage. Glob stayed out of the way since Shmedly was dual-boxing the fight and needed to concentrate.

The second fight was a little rough, since Altedour was spamming -ga spells and stripping away shadows, but it never got dangerous. Glob and Neyla got their items and turned them in for their Cleric's Briaults. Shemdly added me to his buddy list, too.

Into the Desert

I

I've never partied in the desert like this.

found an obscure application for my video card which allowed me to bump up the gamma quite a bit. The first thing I did when I logged on was run to Ifrit's Cauldron to see if I could successfully navigate the place at night. Thankfully, I could. I'm now spared the expense of ordering a new monitor... at least, for now.

Today's run at Samurai was short-lived. Veresko had some business to handle, and he'd warned me in advance that he might have to take a break to deal with business calls. I don't think we'd been fighting beetles in the desert for much more than an hour before he announced he had to meet with some lawyers and would have to leave.

Still, it was nice while it lasted. Neyla found a Warrior and a Scholar to join us. We camped at the NPC near the zone between deserts (Windurst controls the area this week, so I set my homepoint there). I've only partied in the desert once before, and it was in some obscure area where goblins were a serious health hazard. This was my first trip to the "mainstream" desert camp.

The beetles weren't bad, but we were too low in level to take down a dhalmel without the fight lasting a long time and draining our resources. Demonknightx brought his friend's White Mage along again to keep us Hasted. I was a little into 31 when we left.

Neyla

Our pet monkeys take out bombs in Ifrit's Cauldron.

and I returned to Ifrit's Cauldron after the party disbanded and made a circuit of the bombs so I could get a coffer key for my Dragoon Artifact Armor. The bombs were gracious enough to give me one.

From there, we traveled to Meriphitaud Mountains [S] to fight the Yagudo Knights Templar for a shot at the Yagudo Kote he needs. The yags out there near Castle Oztroja are Very Tough to us at 75, and we were using coeurl pets against them. The fights were hairy -- we stayed out of it completely and let the cats do all the work -- but got the Kote from the third or fourth fight.

Not a bad day, really. The xp session was short, but we accomplished other stuff to make up for it.

Yagudo Kote

Neyla has been stumped on a supply quest for the Windurstian campaign. The quartermaster wants him to provide a Yagudo Kote, so Neyla has been trying to figure out where they drop.

Someone

The Yagudo Initiates are stubborn as gnoles.

finally updated the FFXI wiki page to show that Yagudo Initiates in West Sarutabaruta [S] drop them, so I joined him for some farming after my efforts to catch Takitaro for guild points proved fruitless.

It turns out we were both being slapped around by the game, because his efforts were not rewarded either. We killed countless numbers of those idiotic birds strutting around outside Giddeus, but they refused to give up the goods. I didn't mind it too much since they were giving 25-30xp per kill and I had nothing better to do.

"Do they give you the option of canceling the quest?" I asked him.

"I could," he said, "but it's a matter of pride now."

Hopefully one will show up on the auction house soon.

Meditate = Sexy Sauce

I only logged on for a few minutes yesterday to do guild points (Jungle Catfish), and today they were asking for three grimmonites. I already had two on a mule, so it made for another easy day of fishing.

The majority of the day was spent partying in the jungle on Samurai. Demonknightx, who's been in some endgame stuff with us, saw me and Neyla in his Dancer's level range and asked if we wanted to put a party together. I said we were already doing that and invited him along. Neyla found a Blue Mage (Spalko) and a second Warrior (Volnark) to join us. It didn't hurt that Demon brought along a friend's White Mage to throw out emergency cures and Hastes.

It

Now we're slicing up mandies in the other jungle.

started out a little rough; every fight was taking awhile and draining Veresko's MP. It didn't help that a Lv. 33 Dancer named Kevu was soloing mandies with his NPC where we were camped. We eventually moved to a nearby tunnel -- the one with two lizards inside and plenty of prey on either end -- and stayed there for the rest of the session.

It was fun having Demon along, since he teased Veresko about doing all the work. At one point, Veresko popped a Wizard Cookie and started to rest.

"Yeah," Demon said, "you keep eatin' those cookies, man. I'll do all the real healing."

"He only buys them so the Girl Scouts will keep visiting," I pointed out.

"Those little green skirt/vest things are a turn-on, eh?" Demon asked.

I didn't expect to reach Lv. 30, but we managed to pull it off before we had to disband. I was able to try out Meditate, and it's awesome how quickly it builds TP. I know I should probably use it to skillchain with someone, but nobody really bothers anymore and we didn't have a Black Mage with us in the first place. Instead, I'd use a WS, Meditate, and WS again. Too fun.

The Guilds Must Be Crazy

Only

Fishing in the Den of Rancor gives me the creeps.

the lure of 5,040 guild points could drag my tired taru ass into the Den of Rancor to try for Zebra Eels. It's something I've always skipped in the past because of the horror stories I'd read, but I decided to try it anyway.

You zone into the den via the jungle entrance, follow the right wall a bit past the lizards and mandragoras, and then drop down to the lower level. There's a small pool of water on the west side of the zone, guarded by two scorpions which rate Very Tough to a Lv. 75 player. Heh. Just what I wanted.

It wasn't too bad, really. Scorpions detect by sound, so I was safe as long as I kept Sneak going. Sometimes the spell would start to wear off and I'd have to reel in my line and run back to the tunnel where the lizards were roaming so I could safely apply it again, but it didn't take long to get the five eels I needed.

I followed up with a short round of bomb detonation in Ifrit's Cauldron, but there was a RDM in there soloing wasps so I left him to it.

I dinged 49 on Dragoon after the escort and ENM. "Test Your Mite" was largely without incident, although Wulfgar got aggro while running from the outpost NPC to the tower and accidentally slept the goblin, its pet tiger, and the two statues inside. Crookedmidget will be joining us as a regular starting next Sunday, since nobody's seen Hadafal for a few weeks.